But are the numbers you posted CSI? No. Unless I'm missing something.....How are they even specified information at all?

Of course, I don't know what they represent but they just seem like a random listing of numbers to me at this point.

Have you read any of my or Dembski's writings using an archer to define specificity and calculating it?

It would seem germain to the subject should you want to learn that.

Interesting. Because if you had the correct algorithm you would find these number to be very, very specific.

In other words, you can't use CSI to tell the difference between a random series of numbers and a series of non-random numbers.

So, what's the point in CSI? It doesn't mean anything. It doesn't tell us anything unique or useful about the real world.

You do realize that any amino acid chain longer than 250 AAs is, by your definition "CSI" and therefore requiring intelligence. Do you realize that AA chains of nearly that length have been developed in the lab using the random attachments that you deplore as not being capable of forming CSI.

While we're at it, can you explain the 500 bit limit?[/quote]Let's start over with some VERY basic premises........

Here is a number: 53739901284746603....is it CSI?

NO!

It's just a number that doesn't represent anything at all...I just made it up so how is it even information? Information communicates something to the observer.

Numbers in themselves aren't information.....one would have to know what the numbers are calculating....what do they represent? Then one can begin to make sense of it all.

the number 10 doesn't really mean anything...10 what? 10 pebbles, 10 planets, 10 good looking ladies, 10 drinks I had of my favorite whiskey last night? I have to know for 10 to mean anything to me as these "number 10s" have quite different meanings as I process information about them.

So let's start with numbers representing things. I have a pile of 2 pebbles, another pile of 10 pebbles and another pile of 100 pebbles....so how big a pile of pebbles would I have to have before I can calculate CSI?

Well, it might be argued that the bigger piles are more complex because, if we are viewing a pebble as information, 100 bits of information is certainly larger than one one bit and the whole of the parts seem more complex than the sum of one unit that comprise them.

But the truth is, it doesn't matter if I accumulate a billion pebbles in a pile, even if that pile might, by sheer volume be more complex, there is no specificity involved with the pile, therefore a pile of pebbles can never be CSI.

So is a simple pebble information?

Yes. I can be walking down a path, see some pebble laying in it and record in my mind that there are pebbles present. In fact, all matter is information, energy is information because it is also matter.....Einstein taught us that E=MC^2, therefore E=M=I.

But it is specificity and the intelligence it involves that CSI hinges on.......So, let's look at specificity, how it calculates out and how intelligence comes into play with that concept.

I have an archer. I blindfold him and place him in the middle of a huge stadium and tell him to shoot an arrow into the wall. He draws an arrow and plugs it into the wall quite handily.

Am I surprised? Of course not. The wall is so large, it surrounds him, I would be surprised if he DIDN'T hit the wall.

Now I paint the wall into a checkerboard with black and white squares and tell him to hit a black square. Now his odds go down in accomplishing this.

In fact, there is a 50% chance he will and a 50% chance he won't. But he does. I'm still not surprised any more than I would be if I flipped a coin and it comes up heads.

Then I paint the checkboard into 4 colors, then 8, then 16....but wait a minute, the archer is STILL hitting the color I tell him to? The odds of him doing so are becoming so high against him doing it that I'm beginning to suspect something here.

So, on the enormous wall of that giant stadium, I draw a little one inch circle, spin the archer around a few times and tell him to try to hit the tiny circle. He nails it dead center.

OK, only an idiot whould not begin to suspect that intelligence is involved here. Maybe he can see through the blindfold, maybe someone has a walkie talkie and he has a tiny receiver in his ear......Maybe he has ESP..SOMETHING..I don't know....but the odds are so low of him hitting that circle that, if he does, intelligence HAS to be involved somewhere in there.

In fact, once those odds get to be more than 1:10^150 against him (the UPB is reached) it becomes mathematically impossible that he will accomplish the task without intelligence somewhere in there.

So, can you also see how specificity is calculated? With one color he had a 1:1 chance, with 2 a 1:2 chance, with 16 colors a 1:16 chance etc. all the way up to 1:10^150 where he would have no chance at all.